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Fear of retaliation in evangelical circles over Russell Moore

Stand up to Dr. Russell Moore and you face retaliation from Dr. Moore’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and major evangelical groups, according to a Facebook post from a New Testament scholar.

“Many people in the Southern Baptist Convention are afraid of speaking about these problems in ERLC leadership for fear of retribution from Dr. Moore. I have heard from a number of them privately over the years,” said Professor Robert A. J. Gagnon in a Facebook post.

The serious allegations seem to be true when you look at what happened in the last week. Someone in the Moore camp leaked to the pro-Moore Washington Post Dr. Frank Page’s secret meeting with Dr. Moore. The meeting was intended to chart a path forward with Dr. Page conducting something akin to shuttle diplomacy between the various Southern Baptist sides. However, the leak distracted from that effort and became a part of a Never-Trump evangelical elite attack on Dr. Moore’s critics. Essentially, this group of pro-Moore media and evangelical elites pushed a narrative that Dr. Page was attacking Dr. Moore for his political refusal to endorse Trump and was ready to ask for his resignation.

One former Southern Baptist official familiar with the recent meeting was furious at the treatment of Dr. Page. “I don’t believe it,” the former official told the Capstone Report. “He (Page) is fair to all. They (Dr. Moore’s supporters) weren’t fair to him.”

This began the usual round of pro-Moore nonsense from evangelical media elites at places like National Review to Dr. Moore’s enablers in the liberal mainstream press. The clear message of all this: Dissent from Dr. Russell Moore won’t be tolerated.

There is a growing media-evangelical elite complex that is attempting to end the days where Christians have a voice in politics. And this web of evangelical intimidation is growing.

“Many people outside the SBC are also afraid to speak up out of fear for being blacklisted by prominent Evangelicals and conservative Catholics with whom Dr. Moore has worked hard to cultivate influence. He is a major player in the evangelical Gospel Coalition and a darling of Catholic renewal publication First Things, two organizations that I respect greatly,” Professor Gagnon wrote.

The Gospel Coalition has turned into a nest of leftists and cultural Marxists. There were many posts on the Gospel Coalition website pushing an anti-Trump and at times even pro-Hillary agenda during the campaign. Dr. Moore’s association with The Gospel Coalition is yet another serious problem in the growing millennial-driven leftists attack on the traditional culture war position of Southern Baptists.

In any case, the message of this last week is clear—if you don’t kowtow to Dr. Moore and agree with his positions then you will face the consequences from a rabid liberal mainstream press and Dr. Moore’s evangelical enablers.

14 Comments

Capstone, your report provides truly troubling information about Russell Moore. We already knew that he is arrogant and that he wishes for our historic civilization to commit cultural suicide. But now we see that he is vindictive. There is something deeply wrong with Russell Moore’s soul.

This is an interesting topic but an indecipherable article. Can you take another run at it or assign it to a more and clear and concise writer? Who is Dr. Page? What do he and Moore disagree on? How did this get started? Why does it matter to anyone but Moore and Page? Even a smidgen of context and background would help me understand what’s going on here. “Shuttle diplomacy”? No idea what that means, and I bet 95 percent-plus of your readers don’t either. Why not just say what you mean? I laughed out loud, literally, at “the message of this last week is clear.” Nothing in this is clear. Sorry to be disrespectful — and I write for a living so I sympathize with how bad writing happens — but you wasted my time trying to sort through your random notes and thoughts. You owe your readers better than that. Advice from a 30-year pro: Don’t write when you’re angry.

What is going on here is far more sinister than I have seen anyone discuss. Essentially, cultural Marxists, seeking to tear down traditionalism, insert themselves into every wellspring of Western identity. Once there, they incite animosity and division between differing groups by drumming up moral panics, usually by attempting to “start a conversation” about “injustices.” This is done in order to reopen old wounds in order to stoke the fires of fear, grievances, and a need to right any perceived wrongs. Then begins the moral panic, in which it is intimated that all “historical injustices” are actually not only still present in the modern world (whether or not there is evidence), but that everyone is somehow actively perpetuating these injustices as either a willing or unwilling agent. Once this happens, a top-down approach to “correcting” for past or present “oppressions” is implemented to promote “healing and equality.” All of this is then pushed on everyone with incredible pressure. Any who dissent to this or who call out this facile ideology for what it is are slandered, smeared, and labeled with a term that is meant to stigmatize and ostracize (blacklist) them.

Naturally, all of this actually has absolutely nothing to do with righting real injustices or creating true equality. The entire purpose of this ideology (social justice/cultural Marxism) is to invade and destroy Western culture by constantly inciting animosity between identity groups. Wherever the possibility exists to create a division, such as with the history of racism, wedges are driven between people in order to weaken them and turn them against each other. Another key aspect of this ideology is it seeks to manufacture a justification for the redistribution of money, power, and resources from one group to another. This can be seen in Russell Moore’s “Racial Reconciliation” program, wherein whites are painted as “biased” (a term which is meant to legitimize both the baseless narrative and the calling someone “racist” without evidence), and where blacks are portrayed as hapless victims of the ever present “white supremacy.”

If one needs evidence of this, one needs only go to the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission website. There you will find constant attempts to portray whites as perpetrating white supremacists affected by “unconscious biases” who are said to be constantly harming the black community. Ironically, the greatest bigotry perpetuated here is actually against people who are non-white, because this ideology constantly tries to portray these groups as being weak, without agency, and dependent on external help in order to make their way (the bigotry of low expectations). So, not only are whites discriminated against through being portrayed as white supremacists without evidence, but every other demographic is portrayed as having less agency and ability than whites.

The worst part of this poisonously bigoted communistic ideology is that it also perverts and co-opts the gospel to achieve its aims. Even the very message of Christ is taken and twisted in order to justify all of this, as is evidenced in this quote from the ERLC website which I will be linking to:

“I preached on Ephesians 2:11-19, but I focused in on Ephesians 2:14, where Paul describes how Jesus destroyed the “wall of hostility” between Jews and Gentiles.”

The verse has been co-opted to support the claim that there is a war between whites and non-whites.

This has to stop. This ideology is poisonous, bigoted, hateful, and divisive. It seeks to do nothing other than to disrupt and co-opt every subsection of Western culture to serve its ends, and now, it seeks to co-opt the Word itself. The end-goal here is to break up the political homogeneity of the SBC and to transform the organization into a “progressive” ideological factory.

Dr. Moore and his cohorts need to be immediately ejected from the convention.

As a conservative millennial who supports RDM and what he stands for and how he approaches representing a Christian viewpoint, this article made me laugh out loud at how ignorant it is…

RDM should temper his language…that’s fair, but to still hold out hope for some resurgence in a moral majority for Christians in this culture is ignoring actual reality and what the Bible says about culture and where it is headed. We have to change our approach with engaging our culture or we won’t have a voice at all. I’d rather have RDM any day than some mega church “pastor” using his pulpit for his own advancement and to spout his political opinions…go run for office and keep politics out of the pulpit…good luck engaging the culture with the point and yell strategy from a Christian pulpit…give me a freaking break.

There isn’t anyone more well suited to lead the ERLC than RDM. At least he takes and values a biblical worldview rooted in the gospel and Glory of Christ and not Republican talking points…

…and not Republican talking points… Sure, Stephen. You liberals don’t get it. This isn’t republican vs democrat. This is American Patriots vs. globalists. Russell moore, like his heroes the clintons, bushes, etc., is globalist who wants to destroy American through massive moslem immigration. As such, russell moore is on the side of satan and antichrist, not on the side of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This was a comment I found in this article…. http://takimag.com/…/white_privilege_vs_white…/print…

The comment:
“White Privilege” is a 5th column subversive construct of conquest. If the Soros communists who launched this destructive cultural putsch were true to their ideals it would be all about “elite class privilege” and not race specific, but of course they are no truer to a political ideal than they are to the damaging light of the truth. By “white” they mean the productive successful civilly free western cultures and by “privilege” they mean middle class economic and political power. So essentially this is not about race but about toppling western capitalist liberal democratic culture utilizing the racial bigotry of non-white pawns against the power of the middle class – communism demands only 2 classes – the poor and needy and the political overlord class.

The fact that there are a lot of poor white people in western nations literally explodes the lie of “white privilege”, yet the anti-white/anti-western culture ranks grow and become militant/violent. This is because communist 5th columnists know that of all the primitive human motivators envy and revenge are the strongest when combined and “white privilege” allows losers of all colors to scapegoat a race for their personal failings. It also provides a simple criminal solution which approximates a mob looting.

This is a textbook commie destabilization tool of pre-revolution subterfuge and something drastic must be done about it either by government or by civilian defenders of western culture. ALL those involved at the organizational and operational level of racial Bolshevism should be rounded up and sent to either Venezuela, Zimbabwe or the commie hell hole of their choice to experience their racial utopia first hand. Street level practitioners of racial bolshevism need to be neutralized by the most effective means at hand.”

Yes, the blacklisting thing is real, but not new. I think specifically of the criticism Amaziah leveled at Amos (chap. 7), but actually it happened to most of the OT prophets.

The present question we must answer is whether those of us on the “outs” will endure being minimalized and marginalized by those running the structures of the status quo. And furthermore, have we yet reached a tipping point in our own loyalties to the very mechanism which keeps the status quo in business, CP?